How to Succeed in Geology: By Really Trying

The 18 September issue of Eos has a study in the sociology of geology. Specifically, what kind of scientists are the most eminent geologists? Three researchers affiliated with Columbia University looked at the publication records of 115 AGU Fellows and found that the great majority (70%) of these peak performers were "prolific" publishers, producing more than three publications per year and getting more than 20 citations per year for each paper—a combination of high quality and high quantity. But the rest of the Fellows had different trajectories. The next-biggest category (14%) was "perfectionist" publishers, who wrote relatively few articles but made sure they had high impacts. The authors pointed out that this is a pattern more typical of women, at least according to the anecdotal evidence. High-volume publishers amounted to 11 percent—these, it seems to me, would be those glory-hogging people who shoehorn their names into every graduate student's paper. And, of course, others with perfectly good reasons for this pattern. And the remaining 5 percent of Fellows made it in ways "outside of publishing, for example, in institutional adminstration, national and international committee leadership, and private-sector consulting." So there's more than one way to reach the top.